Rebecca Gilpin

Brilliant, as you would expect from an Usborne activity book, with great instruction on how to draw those marvellous machines, and the inclusion of stickers make most little people happy. Only four stars though due to the large amount of painting projects, that a) are not always practical and b) are messy for parents to clean up afterwards!

This is a good book for a teacher to have available in her classroom. With almost 60 simple and fun activities, students can begin to understand the basic concepts of things such as friction and static electricity. The items needed for most of the experiments are household products that are inexpensive to purchase. A few of the projects are a little weak; it seems like the authors took a basic experiment and tried to tie a science theme into it. Overall, the book has some cool activities show more that would be quick and easy to do with young children. The pictures are fun to look at too. This is a book I’ll probably have in my future classroom. show less

This book is Spiders and is very informative. The book describes many spiders in the world. Each page describes a different spider and explains why they are the way they are. The book shows excellent pictures of the spider up close to the point were you can see the spiders skin and very far away. The bbok included a table of contents, and index for all the different spiders, and a websites for children to look up extra information about spiders.

The book does not really relate to me because I show more cant stand spiders. I am terrified of real life spiders but can manage to look at spiders on the internet or in a book.

I would use this book in my class room because everyone know what a spider is but cant exactly tell the different. I would read the book out loud and have the students draw a picture of one of the spiders in the book and describe which spider he or she drew. show less

An informational book on differnt types of spiders. Wonderful upclose pictures of them. Some spiders have 8 eyes as well as 8 legs.Most spiders weave intricate webs that are strong enough to hold their prey. Some spiders eat wasps. The Tarantula is one of the largest and they taste from tiny hairs on their front legs.

Personal Response: I learn quite a lot about the different spiders in Gilpin's book. The pictures were amazing! I did not know that some live in the water and the webs are full show more of air. Also, that some spiders pounce on their prey instead of making webs to catch them.What I have notice with this book and A Dandelions Life is that both have vocabulary words in the back of the books. A nice touch for children to learn words they may not know.

Classroom Extension:
1.Have students write in their journals about one of the spiders what they liked and disliked about that spider.
2. Have the students bring a picture of different spiders to share will the class with the help of their parents, they can look on the internet and find out if some spiders are poisonous. show less